Fox News cut away from President Donald Trump’s defense in his Senate impeachment trial several times on Monday in favor of panel discussions or interviews rather than the live feed of the proceedings.
Fox spent much of the 5 p.m. EST program hour with its popular panel discussions show, The Five. Later, it cut away during The Story with Martha McCallum for interviews with former Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Ranking Member on the House Judiciary Committee Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), among others.
Video footage of President Trump’s legal team making their arguments continued to play, but the audio was muted.
Other, competing cable news networks — including those openly hostile to President Trump, including MSNBC and CNN — remained with the live video and audio feed from the floor of the U.S. Senate, as they had done during the House Democrat impeachment managers’ opening arguments against the president last week.
CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy tweeted that The Five only cut away after former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi had finished her presentation about the reasons for the president’s request to Ukraine that it investigate conflicts of interest involving former Vice President Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden, and the Burisma company in Ukraine.
However, Fox viewers missed much of the subsequent presentation of Eric Herschmann, who followed up on Bondi’s arguments about the Bidens and Burisma, and argued that Democrats’ standard for impeachment would have required that former President Barack Obama be impeached.
Update: Fox News also talked over the presentation of former Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, one of the key arguments in the White House presentation.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.